The Need for Cross-Server Battlegrounds

[MongoJerry]

I will be posting this letter on several locations on the Blizzard forums tomorrow. All comments and suggestions are welcome.

THE NEED FOR CROSS-SEVER BATTLEGROUNDS -- AN OPEN LETTER

Dear Blizzard World of Warcraft developers,

Kudos to you for creating an exciting and imaginative game, and in particular, for creating the two battlegrounds of Warsong Gulch and Alterac Valley, which are fun and exciting to play in. Thousands of people spend hours of their day every day fighting intense battles against both players and NPC's, and the fun rarely flags. There is one problem, however. Not enough people get to experience the fun and thrill of your creations, because the player populations on the individual servers are not large enough to support the large number of battleground instances necessary to allow a free-flow of players in and out of the battleground queues. On many servers, one or both battlegrounds have effectively ceased to exist, because there are never enough players of one faction or the other queuing up at the right times. It's not that people don't want to play the battlegrounds. It's just that when an individual tries to queue up and sees that there are no games being played, the person gets discouraged and leaves. The population of players who want to play in the battlegrounds needs to be pooled together so that there are always a large number of games -- not just 2-3 games but dozens of games -- going at once to choose from.

The Problem -- Tichondrius and Stormrage Examples

Let me illustrate the problem using the examples of two high population servers that I play on -- Tichondrius and Stormrage. Tichondrius is a high population PvP server and for many weeks, we had a pretty good showing at the battlegrounds. There were always 2-3 CTF matches and usually 1-2 AV matches going on. The queue times were often long as bottlenecks occurred (if a CTF match took a long time to conclude, then the people outside were stuck out in the cold), but at least we had games going on all the time. The problem came about a month ago when one of the more organized Alliance guilds on the server decided to have guild AV nights. An organized group of 30-40 people will almost always roll over a pickup group, so they realized they could destroy anybody in the contribution point system by repeatedly winning AV matches in under 30 minutes at a time. Other Alliance guilds followed suit and then some Horde guilds started doing the same thing. So now there are often 3-4 AV games going on at once, but now the small but loyal population of CTF'ers has been depleted as they join guild AV events or find that they also have grind AV to get contribution points and faction. The end result is that there has only been a handful of high level CTF matches in the last month on the server, despite the fact that there are dozens of players on the server (according to the posts on the Tichondrius forums) who want to play CTF. I know for my part that at least 20 people in my guild alone would love to play CTF if only people on the Alliance side would queue up and play. And, of course, people on the Alliance side say the same thing. But the only high level matches that have recently occurred on the server were organized guild vs guild events. Pickup high level CTF is effectively dead on Tichondrius.

The problem is even worse on Stormrage, a high population PvE server. Since the Stormrage players are a self-selected PvE community, a smaller percentage of the population there is interested in PvP play. The end result is that there are typically only one or two AV matches a week -- basically only when one of the organized Horde guilds on the server declare the evening to be an "AV night." The casual player who wants to log on and spend a few hours playing AV is left out in the cold unless they happen to log in on those special scheduled evenings.

If these kinds of problems are occurring on two relatively high population servers, I can only imagine how bad the situation is on lower population servers. There have been many attempts to encourage players to move from high population servers to low population servers, but one has to remember that doing so means that a person doing this gives up their best opportunities to play in these fun and exciting battlegrounds.

It's not that people don't want to play in the battlegrounds. On the contrary, the complaints are loud and clear, "I want to CTF so badly!" The problem is that the populations on the individual servers are not large enough to support a constant flow of players in and out of the games. A person can't just log in, get in the queue for a battleground, get in within 15 minutes, play for a couple of hours, and then log off when the person is done. Instead, in order to get in a game, one has to either log in at specific times when large guilds hold battleground events or one has to wait in queue and hope that the one or two battleground matches that are going on, if any, end sometime soon.

The Solution: Cross-Server Battlegrounds

The solution to the problem is straight-forward: Cross-server battlegrounds. The idea is that when you enter the queue for a battleground, you enter an all-server queue and end up playing with and against players on other servers. This idea isn't original with me. I actually got the idea from an acquaintance who is a GM at Blizzard who told me two months ago that a cross-server battlegrounds system was being worked on. I got very excited about the idea when he told me about it, but two months have passed, and I haven't heard anything more. I now worry that the idea of cross-server battlegrounds was scrapped, tabled, or relegated as a low priority item. I write this open letter in the hope that it will encourage more discussion of this issue and encourage the development of cross-server battlegrounds faster, because cross-server battlegrounds is something that is needed now instead of months from now.

The benefits of cross-server battlegrounds are as follows:

1. There will be battleground games happening all the time everywhere! People can log in day or night and see dozens of games up. This would encourage more people to play the battlegrounds, because they can play them at their own convenience.

2. The bottlenecks will be removed. As it stands, if there is only one match of a certain battleground going on and if the participants are fairly evenly matched, then anyone waiting in queue will have a long time to wait before they ever get in a game. But if there are dozens of games going on, then there will be a constant flow of games ending and starting, so having a few games bogged down by evenly matched opponents won't cause any inconvenience on those waiting in queue. Understand that cross-server battlegrounds will not eliminate queues, because obviously at any given time one faction or the other will have more players trying to enter the battleground queue than the other (probably most of the time, there will be more Alliance players than Horde players overall). However, because there will be a constant flow of games ending and starting, the queue line will constantly move.

3. Severe faction population differences will be smoothed over. While there is an overall higher population of Alliance players over Horde players over the World of Warcraft universe, some servers have much more severe population differences than others. Some servers have as large as a 2:1 Alliance:Horde ratio, which makes it nearly impossible for Alliance players to get in the battlegrounds on their servers. Meanwhile, some servers actually have higher Horde populations or at least higher populations of Horde players interested in battlegrounds. By linking the servers, these severe population disconnects would be smoothed over, and players on these servers could experience a more rational queue rather than the severe queues that they have been experiencing.


When I've mentioned cross-server battlegrounds to others, some people have said that technical problems may be the issue -- such as perhaps the server architecture isn't set up to handle that kind of system. According to my GM source, however, that's actually not true. The technical details are supposed to be actually quite simple, because the battleground instances for many different servers are already hosted on the same machines. Instead, he said that the main problems were working out minutia like naming conflicts (e.g. What happens if two Neriads from different servers join the same battleground instance?). I don't want to minimize the task that I'm asking for. I realize that it would take several programmers to work out all of the details of the system to get it working properly. However, I also know that this kind of system is possible to implement, and I want to emphasize to the developers and the WoW community at large how important that this feature gets implemented as soon as possible. I don't care if my name in the battlegrounds has to look like Neriad_Tich or Neriad_0015. I just want to be able to play in the battlegrounds whenever I get the itch to play in one.

(Note: There could also be an issue with a cross-server economy. That is, one could make farming characters on low population servers and use the cross-server battlegrounds to transfer supplies and cash to characters on high population servers. If that is considered a major problem, then one can either disallow trading in the battlegrounds altogether or just allow trading of conjured items like mage water and warlock health stones).

The problems with battleground queues are severe, and with a third exciting-looking battleground to be released soon, splitting an already too small PvP crowd, the situation is only unfortunately going to get worse. I encourage you, as World of Warcraft developers, to work on implementing cross-server battlegrounds as soon as possible in order allow more people to experience the fantastic content that you are creating.

Sincerely,

Neriad aka MongoJerry
Tichondrius

[oldmandennis]

/agree

Hopefully some of your fame (or infamy) has reached blizz, and will give this some weight.

[Kjartan]

Fully agree, however this was answered on the blizz forums less than 2 months ago:

Has blizz ever thought about Cross-server

Yes, we have definitely thought about Cross Server Battlegrounds. It's a cool idea for several reasons and also solves some problems.

Unfortunately, at this time, our server architecture does not support the concept. That doesn't mean that there isn't the chance that someday we could restructure things to accommodate the idea. It's a cool idea and we'll keep discussing it.

Unless linked battleground is the special incentive with the new Arathi Basin I suspect it will end up being even worse. Even just being able to be in queue for several battle grounds would be a start, that way people could play WSG until AV fills up instead of spending the whole night waiting.

[Zarathustra]

A few problems I see:

1. Duplicate names. A realm surname would have to be implemented, or something to that effect.

2. Imbalance. I can see a party of 10 players from a high population server, decked out in their MC sets, facing 10 from a fairly new server who's not yet completed their blues.

3. Items. Blizzard already has problems with instance abuse to duplicate items. This might open the doors for even more.

[Quark]

A few problems I see:

1.  Duplicate names.  A realm surname would have to be implemented, or something to that effect.

2.  Imbalance.  I can see a party of 10 players from a high population server, decked out in their MC sets, facing 10 from a fairly new server who's not yet completed their blues.

3.  Items.  Blizzard already has problems with instance abuse to duplicate items.  This might open the doors for even more.
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1) As Mongo said, I don't care if my name is Ramala001. Just let me play.

2) This already happens on my server. Alliance pickup decked out in green/blues versus Horde guild with all purples and epic mounts.

3) Trading is something that has to be dealt with, but I'd rather have no trading during BGs than no BGs.

To MongoJerry - thank you for formalizing a letter for this, and I hope it gets us somewhere. I'm tired of them advertising a game I'm not getting.

[Xanthix]

That's a great summary and a great letter, and I think you've hit a lot of great points. But I am sure Blizzard is already aware of the possibilities, pros/cons, and technical hurdles related to linked battlegrounds. I'm sure they get thousands of emails and posts and tickets about this every day. I have no doubt that they have considered this and have already done a cost/benefit analysis, and have placed it in the appropriate place in their "todo" queue.

I hope your letter is successful in getting attention and support, but I don't know if it (by itself) will have any more effect than the hundreds of other petition threads.

[MongoJerry]

That's a great summary and a great letter, and I think you've hit a lot of great points. But I am sure Blizzard is already aware of the possibilities, pros/cons, and technical hurdles related to linked battlegrounds. I'm sure they get thousands of emails and posts and tickets about this every day. I have no doubt that they have considered this and have already done a cost/benefit analysis, and have placed it in the appropriate place in their "todo" queue.

I hope your letter is successful in getting attention and support, but I don't know if it (by itself) will have any more effect than the hundreds of other petition threads.

Surprisingly, a lot of people don't know about the idea. I've talked with a lots of people about it when complaining about battleground queues, and for many that was the first time they'd ever heard the idea mentioned. What I'm hoping to do is to raise the voices clammering for this a little louder. It wouldn't surprise me if there are some people at Blizzard who want this very badly but were turned down due to as you say cost/benefit analysis. My hope is that my letter combined with clammering from other people will give those at Blizzard who want this more ammunition to use. i.e. I want to convince those with the power to approve projects to increase their view of the benefit of cross-server battlegrouds so that hopefully it's enough to justify the costs.

[MongoJerry]

I made a few minor edits to the letter -- and thanks to those who pointed out typos and grammar problems to me. I also changed to using the term "cross-server battlegrounds" rather than "linked battlegrounds," because the former seems to be the most commonly used term for the idea.

[lemekim]

I've seen this idea thrown around before, and I do agree that it would be wonderful. I don't see it as being too hard to implement, since instance servers are separate anyway, the only catch being that one would have to coordinate queues among servers, shouldn't be too hard. The other two issues that are listed actually have solutions for both already.

One is the duplicate name limitation - but somehow that was not a problem on the test server. Or make everyone have the name Neriad_FM, where the last two letters are unique server ID. And the other is economy worries, but ironically Blizzard found a way to disable trading on the trial accounts when they found out they were used for duping. Just do most of your trading before entering BG, and you should be fine.

[savaughn]

While I appreciate the concept, Mongo, we all know that Blizzard has looked at this idea and have a much better grasp of the advantages and disadvantages of doing this than the players do. While this may seem like a "simple" fix, it is quite likely that this would take several months of coding work to accomplish and the reality is that you are only talking about a band-aid.

The issues you list are very real and crippling. If you look at the solution you are describing, there is a disconnect between the issues and the solution. For example, the line may move somewhat more consistently with a combined solution but that same line will be exponentially longer. There is no net improvement there.

Let's take a look at what this would do. Let's say that server A has a horde guild that has organized an AV event. They pull the bodies together to create an AV instance. Now, normally, that server's alliance side would now be able to play. Instead you will be talking about pulling one or two players from dozens of servers. You will end up with maybe one or two players per server who get to play and you will have to wait in a line of tens of thousands. There is also zero chance that you will be able to join an AV instance as a group in such a scenario.

There are design issues with Battlegrounds. Rather than have Blizzard spend months working on band-aids, I'd rather see them plow their resources into actually correcting the underlying issues. They have fixed resourcing. If they commit to implementing a band-aid, that means they are not working on the long term solution.

[lemekim]

While I appreciate the concept, Mongo, we all know that Blizzard has looked at this idea and have a much better grasp of the advantages and disadvantages of doing this than the players do.  While this may seem like a "simple" fix, it is quite likely that this would take several months of coding work to accomplish and the reality is that you are only talking about a band-aid.

"Months of coding" is Blizzard's slang for "low-priority". Remember aspect of the Hawk bug that hampered Hunters that Blizzard wouldn't fix for months, only to fix it a few days after someone found a way to abuse the bug? If we can make this higher priority for them, we will see it much sooner.

The issues you list are very real and crippling.  If you look at the solution you are describing, there is a disconnect between the issues and the solution.  For example, the line may move somewhat more consistently with a combined solution but that same line will be exponentially longer.  There is no net improvement there.

The line will probably move relatively same, true, but what it tries to solve is not that. Having no AV up for a month is what it's trying to solve. New competition for those tired fighting the same faces.

Let's take a look at what this would do.  Let's say that server A has a horde guild that has organized an AV event.  They pull the bodies together to create an AV instance.  Now, normally, that server's alliance side would now be able to play.  Instead you will be talking about pulling one or two players from dozens of servers.  You will end up with maybe one or two players per server who get to play and you will have to wait in a line of tens of thousands.  There is also zero chance that you will be able to join an AV instance as a group in such a scenario.

The higher amount of AVs, the faster the lines go. Sure, only 2 people might be able to get into this PARTICULAR AV, but there are about 100 other AVs, so the remaining people will find an AV to play somewhere there. If anything, this will make getting in as a group easier, since the random players that are trying to get in will not be forced to wait for a spot in that 1 AV game, but will choose from many more. As soon as it's the turn of your 40 people to get in, a new AV will spawn for you and fill up with opponents from the other side who are waiting to get in.

A server-wide BG system would be more then a band-aid. It will solve most of the current problems, some that Mongo mentioned, some others (such as people afking out will stop). And of course, new challenges, new people to fight. I don't see any downside.

[Quark]

Let's take a look at what this would do.  Let's say that server A has a horde guild that has organized an AV event.  They pull the bodies together to create an AV instance.  Now, normally, that server's alliance side would now be able to play.  Instead you will be talking about pulling one or two players from dozens of servers.  You will end up with maybe one or two players per server who get to play and you will have to wait in a line of tens of thousands.  There is also zero chance that you will be able to join an AV instance as a group in such a scenario.
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Bull. What happens when there's a line of "tens of thousands" - a new AV will start up. There's over 100 servers in the US right now. Some of those can have 3 or 4 AVs up at a time, some seen an AV once a week. Take all the ones that see AV once a week - instead of 20 to 30 people in a queue nightly on one side that never get to play, those 20 to 30 will be joining up with people from another server to play. There are people who wait in a queue their entire game session to see if AV will start up - but it never does. Take that over 100 servers, and you can at least get some AV going. Get some AV going, people will realize "hey, it's actually playable, I'll put myself into the queue" and thus, even more AV.

You're wrong on the group aspect too - it'll be easier. The last time AV went up on our server, the Horde tried to organize it as a 40 player raid and then join the queue. Slight problem, there was a few Horde already in the queue with higher priority. The AV didn't start until the Horde split up their raid and joined individually, leaving the last members to join stuck in the queue while the rest got to play. Since individuals in the queue will actually have some place to go, instead of just blocking the queue, groups are more viable.

[LochnarITB]

/signed

When I first heard about AV, it gave me hope of having a way to actually enjoy PvP. I tried WG a couple times, but it didn't interest me. It is too limited in the roles to play and too frantic. I have tried getting into AV a couple times. If there was no AV running, I was still watching the waiting time tick up a couple hours later. If there did happen to be an AV up, the space was already filled so I again waited only to have the AV end without me entering and no other starting. Blizzard, as much as I want new content, I would like to see this considered before new instances or even new lands are added. This holds so much potential for maintaining the player base, I just can't see why this is not the top priority.

[Kevin]

Bull.  What happens when there's a line of "tens of thousands" - a new AV will start up.  There's over 100 servers in the US right now.  Some of those can have 3 or 4 AVs up at a time, some seen an AV once a week.  Take all the ones that see AV once a week - instead of 20 to 30 people in a queue nightly on one side that never get to play, those 20 to 30 will be joining up with people from another server to play.  There are people who wait in a queue their entire game session to see if AV will start up - but it never does.  Take that over 100 servers, and you can at least get some AV going.  Get some AV going, people will realize "hey, it's actually playable, I'll put myself into the queue" and thus, even more AV.

You're wrong on the group aspect too - it'll be easier.  The last time AV went up on our server, the Horde tried to organize it as a 40 player raid and then join the queue.  Slight problem, there was a few Horde already in the queue with higher priority.  The AV didn't start until the Horde split up their raid and joined individually, leaving the last members to join stuck in the queue while the rest got to play.  Since individuals in the queue will actually have some place to go, instead of just blocking the queue, groups are more viable.
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The only real issue that will still cause problems is that if you keep PvP and PvE battlegrounds seperate (and I'm not sure you need to) then there is a horde v alliance imbalance on the PvE servers. Blizzard has admitted that PvE servers are alliance heavy and the census site data really isn't that far off the true mark I don't think. However as you said it should still be better for all as the 5 horde here and there will be enough to get another instance running so at least 40 alliance that couldn't play in one at all will be able to. Alliance will still mostly likely have longer lines and more issues but they should not be as severe. PvP servers are pretty balanced on horde v alliance so that shouldn't be too bad off. Not sure what you do with RP servers they are currently PvE as far as the base ruleset goes. Just my one minor little point to pick at.

[fractaled]

"Months of coding" is Blizzard's slang for "low-priority". Remember aspect of the Hawk bug that hampered Hunters that Blizzard wouldn't fix for months, only to fix it a few days after someone found a way to abuse the bug?

I think it depends a lot on their architecture. Just because the instances are run on the same server, doesn't mean they have any mechanism for an instance-application to talk to multiple world-applications. Stuff like that might be baked in at a low enough level to make this truly painful for them.

[MongoJerry]

While I appreciate the concept, Mongo, we all know that Blizzard has looked at this idea and have a much better grasp of the advantages and disadvantages of doing this than the players do.  While this may seem like a "simple" fix, it is quite likely that this would take several months of coding work to accomplish and the reality is that you are only talking about a band-aid.

The issues you list are very real and crippling.  If you look at the solution you are describing, there is a disconnect between the issues and the solution.  For example, the line may move somewhat more consistently with a combined solution but that same line will be exponentially longer.  There is no net improvement there.

I don't think you have a real handle on the problem, Savaughn. The problems with the queues are due to low population problems. The most obvious example is when there is not enough players of one faction queuing up to start a game. In this case, one has to wait an infinite amount of time to get in a a game. But even if a game is going on, what happens when the teams are evenly matched? People can be waiting for hours for spaces to become available, because such a game doesn't end in a timely fashion.

However, with cross-server battlegrounds, there will always be games going on and what's more dozens and possibly hundreds of them. More battlegrounds would be played at once, because the player pool would be made up of players from all over. In addition, while some games will be evenly matched, other games will be lopsided and end quickly. Games will be ending and starting all the time, so there will be a smooth flow of players in and out of the instances. So what if you're in a queue of 1000? If an AV is starting up every 30 seconds, then that means you'll get in within 10 minutes. That's so much better than anything anybody sees currently.

Let's take a look at what this would do.  Let's say that server A has a horde guild that has organized an AV event.  They pull the bodies together to create an AV instance.  Now, normally, that server's alliance side would now be able to play.  Instead you will be talking about pulling one or two players from dozens of servers.  You will end up with maybe one or two players per server who get to play and you will have to wait in a line of tens of thousands.  There is also zero chance that you will be able to join an AV instance as a group in such a scenario.

I don't understand how you're coming to your conclusion. Cross-server battlegrounds would make joining as a group far easier than it is now, because AV games would be constantly ending and starting. Once a group got to the head of the queue, they would get in the next game that got started. With cross-server battlegrounds, full 40-man raids could get in almost as quickly as individuals. They wouldn't have to wait the hours upon hours that they have to do now.

There are design issues with Battlegrounds.  Rather than have Blizzard spend months working on band-aids, I'd rather see them plow their resources into actually correcting the underlying issues.  They have fixed resourcing.  If they commit to implementing a band-aid, that means they are not working on the long term solution.

This isn't a band-aid. It is the long term solution to the problem, which is why I want them to work on it *now*.

[MongoJerry]

The only real issue that will still cause problems is that if you keep PvP and PvE battlegrounds seperate (and I'm not sure you need to) then there is a horde v alliance imbalance on the PvE servers.  Blizzard has admitted that PvE servers are alliance heavy and the census site data really isn't that far off the true mark I don't think.  However as you said it should still be better for all as the 5 horde here and there will be enough to get another instance running so at least 40 alliance that couldn't play in one at all will be able to.  Alliance will still mostly likely have longer lines and more issues but they should not be as severe.  PvP servers are pretty balanced on horde v alliance so that shouldn't be too bad off.  Not sure what you do with RP servers they are currently PvE as far as the base ruleset goes.  Just my one minor little point to pick at.

Cross-server battlegrounds wouldn't eliminate queues by any means. It would simply make them more rational and flowing. The situation would still be better for alliance players than now simply because there would be more games going on, so that more people would get to play them. But most importantly, it would eliminate bottlenecks. Sure, alliance PvE players might experience wait queues, but they might only be 15-20 minutes rather than the two hours or never that they experience now.

[Kevin]

Cross-server battlegrounds wouldn't eliminate queues by any means.  It would simply make them more rational and flowing.  The situation would still be better for alliance players than now simply because there would be more games going on, so that more people would get to play them.  But most importantly, it would eliminate bottlenecks.  Sure, alliance PvE players might experience wait queues, but they might only be 15-20 minutes rather than the two hours or never that they experience now.
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Yep. I reread what I posted and I wasn't clear. Cross-server will make things better by far and it will solve the problem Quark has and that I had the couple of times I decided I wanted to get in there and see what the deal was. I was just pointing out that Alliance will still likely have queues that will be longer than horde ones, but they should at least be able to get into an AV instance with cross server queues, as you pointed out. But I did word my little nit poorly.

[kandrathe]

In general about PvP and BG's in particular;

1) Fix the bugs and the exploits. Nothing turns players off to PvP more than getting owned by cheaters.

2) Remove the DK penalty for civilians. Nothing is sillier than 30 or more Lvl 60 heroes being chased out of town by a washer women with a broom. If they keep DK, then it should only be to the person(s) involved with the killing of the civilian, not the entire raid.

3) The difference between a PvP and a PvE server in terms of battlegrounds is that a significant number of people on a PvE server have never fought a single PvP battle, and in order to do so need to go somewhere off their beaten path and seek it out. They won't. Battlegrounds need to be staged such that new, low level characters (as low as lvl 10) are encouraged to participate. The way it is set up now is as an after thought, not well integrated into the story or game. This is WAR-craft, so lets get battleing. This would be difficult to design in now, since Tirisfal, Teldrassil, Ellwyn, Dun Morogh, Durotaur, and Brill are somewhat isolated with high level areas preventing contact. Perhaps an island battlegrounds accessible by a ship. It would be nice for a BG battle to be a requirement for completing a lvl 10 quest with a nice reward. This would introduce people to the PvP aspect of the game, and hopefully it would induce them to pursue it more.

4) The current WG level groups (21-30, 31-40, 41-50, and 51-60) are too broad. 9 levels is too big a difference. I think it should be (10-10, 11-15, 16-20, 21-25, 26-30, 31-35, 35-39, 40-44, 45-49, 50-54, 55-59, 60-60) -- This gives level 10's a fair BG to get in and try it out against a very balanced group, moves lvl 40's (with mounts) out of the 30's, and separates level 60's with all their purple gear into their own elite club. AV is already meant for high levels, so I would just increase the levels to lvl 55-60.

[Concillian]

Some servers have as large as a 2:1 Alliance:Horde ratio, which makes it nearly impossible for Alliance players to get in the battlegrounds on their servers.

According to the census sites, the activity ratios suggest that there are few Normal and RP servers that aren't AT LEAST 2:1.

On Terenas some of the high level alliance interested in BG have re-rolled horde in order to participate more in BG (especially getting AV going).

One of the large problems I've seen is that without enough AV instances, there is a steady supply of relatively low level people (51-55) who are interested in AV primarily for the Korrak quest and this becomes a fairly significant issue once things get moving along. A more steady supply of AV instances should result in overall a higher quality of play for those currently on a Normal server (by definition, an imbalanced server)


One change that I think would help a LOT is to add a # of people queued on BOTH SIDES visible to anyone queued. This would allow people to see if say, 20 people from their faction are queued for AV, and they only need 10 more. It would allow them to start recruiting in their capitol city. How the queue works now, you might be the only one queued or there could be 40 on the other faction and 29 on yous, you'll never know.

On Terenas though, nobody EVER queues for AV unless a post goes into the forum that there will be an effort to get enough Horde queued for AV. The people farming CPs will get in queue for WSG, and without them AV will never open. I've queued once or twice, but the only time I actually got in, it took over 2 hours of me spamming Orgrimmar and the official realm forum. Not surprisingly, horde lost because of lack of people, but I got a taste and I enjoyed what I tasted.